In what has become a defining moment of my entire life, my first true humanities moment provided clarity and direction for my future in the midst of all…
In my first semester as a history grad student, I remember reading an assigned book that changed my perspective on history forever. Prior to grad school, I had…
My wanderlust took me to many places around the world where I experienced humanities moments at nearly every turn, but my hometown is where my relationship with the…
Historian Ed Ayers discusses how Richmond, Virginia’s 2015 sesquicentennial celebration drew upon the past to re-imagine the future. He emphasizes the ways in which the event’s planners sought…
I was born in Boston and raised in New England. I attended an elite, all-girls, private school in New England, which was established in 1854 with the mission…
The most powerful Humanities Moments for me occurred during William Sturkey’s NEH session entitled “Contested Patriotisms: Dissent and Nationalism on the US Homefront.” One thing that stuck with…
On May 8th, 1957, South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem was greeted by President Dwight Eisenhower (along with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles) at Washington National Airport…
J. Porter Durham, Jr. grew up in the segregated South during a time when public Ku Klux Klan sightings were not uncommon. In this video, Durham describes how…
In this short video, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns recalls having Robert Penn Warren read a passage from his novel All the King’s Men during the production of the…
Ken Burns describes how lines from a historic speech given by 29-year-old Abraham Lincoln have “haunted and inspired” him for nearly 40 years. Expanding on what is revealed…
In this video submission, Ken Burns recounts how formative experiences, both deeply personal and as a young person growing up in the midst of the Civil Rights era,…
In this video submission, artist Carter Thompson discusses how a recent exhibit on the Harlem Renaissance revealed some of the fascinating history of the century-old building in which…
National Endowment for the Humanities Chairman William “Bro” Adams shares how philosophy professor and World War II veteran Glenn Gray and his book The Warriors: Reflections on Men…
I had been to the Virginia State Capitol many times since I moved to Richmond in 1989. I’ve viewed proceedings in the House and Senate chambers, held meetings…
An early encounter with muckraking American novelist Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle exposed Kristen Shedd to issues surrounding human rights and animal rights in the early 20th century. For…